


we make the rules

by humvee



Series: and then you [2]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-11 04:49:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4421984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humvee/pseuds/humvee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without these prescribed interactions—LT and TL, buddy and buddy—they’re both lost. Maybe it’s always been this way and that’s why Nate has made it thus far just muddling along, faking it until he makes it without knowing what to do or how to do it. But he realizes suddenly that these are the kinds of revelations you make at the end of something—that’s he’s only realizing it, that he’s only able to diagnose it, because it’s too late with Brad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we make the rules

Nate’s just finished shoving his pens into a mug and reading Rick’s response to his new e-mail address— _I’m programming my e-mail to automatically block any messages with a traitor’s domain_ —when another message pings into his inbox.

Brad’s style of communication has not changed. Nate stares at the congratulations and the blank space around it until giving up and pulling up Google. He just types in “news” before he realizes how stupid that is, and pokes around on CNN. All he’s got after fifteen minutes is bird flu and Saddam Hussein’s trial in Baghdad. He’s not sure what Brad knows about to congratulate him on, unless it’s staying alive in the midst of the avian flu. He spends a few more minutes before checking time zones and reaching for his phone.

“Colbert.”

“Congratulations to you, too,” says Nate. “On surviving thus far in the wake of bird flu.”

“What?” says Brad.

Nate wonders why they’re doing this again. “Your e-mail?”

“Right,” says Brad.

“If it’s about the new job, let me tell you that someone has already called me two names, and neither were quite mine. Nathan was closer than Matt, though.”

Brad snorts. The e-mail is left undiscussed.

: : :

By now Nate knows to pick up the unknown foreign number flashing on his caller ID, but answers cautiously just in case.

“Fick.”

“It looks good, now that it’s out,” says Brad. His voice is tinny and distant, probably on a payphone. “Not that I’m surprised, I guess.”

Nate can’t pretend he doesn’t know what this is about anymore.

“Look—” he starts.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” says Brad. “Checked the listserve lately?”

“Uh, no,” says Nate. He’s subscribed to that on his .mil address.

“That would explain your surprise.”

Oh, shit. “Brad—”

“You didn’t think you should’ve notified any of us?” says Brad. “We’re in it. Probably some rule about that. Or are any resemblances to anyone living or dead purely coincidental?”

Nate hedges just long enough for Brad to figure it out. “I’m not in it,” he says.

“No,” admits Nate. “Not really.”

“I had some pretty good one-liners, though.”

“Brad—”

“I’m kidding,” says Brad. “I don’t need any more publicity.”

“I didn’t tell you because—”

“You don’t have to explain anything.”

“I didn’t trust myself,” is Nate’s spectacular finish.

“To do me justice?”

“Yes.”

There’s a pause. “I’m joking.”

“I know,” says Nate, and clears his throat. “I didn’t think anyone would Google me.”

“Maybe not. But everyone sees the New York Times.”

“Do they?”

“Nate.”

“I’m serious.”

“You published a book so that no one would see it?” Brad asks. “Ray’s got alerts set up.”

“For me?”

“For everyone,” says Brad.

“Is he the one that runs it?” says Nate. “I thought it was Mike. Wynn.”

“No, I think Gunny has a life,” Brad replies.

“True.”

“I’m not going to interrogate you about it,” says Brad. “Just thought you should know. Houston-Michelin certainly made an effort, but if they’re doing that without your authorization, you should probably get that squared away.”

“Houghton-Mifflin,” Nate corrects, when he realizes what Brad tried to say.

“What?”

“That’s the name of the publishing house.”

There’s a long silence, and Nate kind of wants to laugh.

“Okay,” says Brad, as though taking a deep breath, “Houghton-Mifflin.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Nate says honestly, “and then I didn’t know how to bring it up, and then deadlines caught up and—it just got too far.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“I’m aware,” says Nate, a little irritated now.

“Anyway,” says Brad. “I’ll talk to you later.”

The line goes dead, and Nate’s alien, refracted voice saying a belated goodbye is the only thing left.

Well, Nate thinks. At least he didn’t laugh, which, if Nate’s being honest, is at least fifty percent of not knowing how to tell Brad. Fifty percent of doing anything is anticipating the reaction. He’s not sure why he thought Brad would have any reaction, let alone laugh; he can’t even remember what Brad’s laugh sounds like.

: : :

There’s another lull in communication that Nate resolves to be proactive about. Proactive, in this case, meaning with the assistance of alcohol.

“I’m applying to grad schools,” Nate tells him, point-blank, at the beginning of the phone call.

“Okay,” says Brad. He sounds tired.

“I just want you to know.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve—”

“Yes, Nate, I get it,” Brad says, and Nate figures he laid it on thick, but doesn’t like being called out on it anyway.

“Busy?” Brad asks.

“Eating an expired Kashi bar,” says Nate, turning it over in his hand. “The chocolate advertised on the label is now brown dust. Should I be worried?”

“It’s too late now.”

Nate snorts. “Then I just wasted sixty dollars on that application fee.”

“The extortion starts early.”

“What do you think about UCLA?” Nate asks.

“That depends. What are you wearing?”

Nate laughs. “Wait—what? Are you serious?”

“No,” says Brad. “What do I think about UCLA, or what do I know about it?”

“Both.”

“Go Bruins,” Brad says. “Why?”

“You know,” says Nate, spinning around in his chair. “I’m just shopping around. Looking at different schools.” He’s already submitted all of the applications he knew he was going to submit, but he doesn’t mention that to Brad. Proactivity only goes so far.

“What, something else besides Harvard and Yale in the cards?”

“I don’t know. I’ve had like three hard ciders.”

That makes Brad laugh. “Are you telling me you’re drunk?”

“No,” says Nate. “I don’t do that anymore.”

“Get drunk, or tell me about it?”

“Both, but mostly the second one.”

Brad starts saying something just as Nate decides to change the subject.

“What?” Nate asks.

“Are you asking seriously about UCLA?” Brad says.

“Yes,” Nate replies, suddenly nervous.

“Why?”

“It has a great program,” he defends. “Top ten. The weather—it’d be a change of pace.”

“Not Berkeley?”

“That too, maybe,” Nate says, and can’t believe the name didn’t even cross his mind until now.

“And it’s close,” he adds after a few seconds.

“Close to where?”

Nate swallows and says, “San Diego.”

“Nate…” comes Brad’s warning.

“If I got a job,” he starts, and realizes he doesn’t know what he’s saying. A job where? The fucking Depot?

“Nate.”

“Never mind,” says Nate, hot and feeling his face getting red, alone in the room.

“Forget UCLA,” Brad suggests. “What about beautiful, soggy England?”

“I think I’m done with international traveling for a little while,” says Nate. The forced laugh that follows doesn’t make things better. There’s a pause, and Nate’s brain uses it to think about every pause they’ve had, about the biggest pause, after his—oh God—jaunt across the pond, which, in his weakest moments, he still pretends didn’t happen.

“No one’s asking you to move here,” says Brad.

“Guess not,” Nate replies absently, still resolutely preoccupied with thinking about things that aren’t England.

Brad clears his throat, and then says, “Though I hear DC’s just as soggy this time of year.”

Nate realizes suddenly what his mind is trying to push away from him. “Where are you spending Christmas?”

“I’m waiting for someone to tell me.”

Nate laughs. “I guess that never changes with the Corps.”

“Not exactly,” says Brad, and Nate finally allows himself the leap.

“DC’s exactly as soggy as you’ve heard,” he says. “Interested?”

Of course, Nate parks at the right terminal but is at the wrong gate, but he’s already paid for the ticket. Brad calls him before he can call Brad.

“Where are you?” he says, twisting around on the escalator going down to arrivals.

“Where the hell is your car?” Brad growls. “I’ve been walking around here for fifteen minutes.”

Nate frowns. “I don’t know, I’m pretty sure I parked it in Lot 4.” At another frustrated noise from Brad, he adds: “Just go back to the concourse, I’ll meet you there.”

Nate pushes through the tourists and returning families with the suitcases and neck pillows and sweatshirts and finally gets to the carousel. Brad is standing there, wearing a thin gray shirt and jeans, a black backpack slung over his shoulder. Each time seeing Brad is—the changes aren’t dramatic enough to make it different, but it’s not the same, either. This moment places Brad, who once belonged only in the dusty corners of a desert in Nate’s mind, in an airport. The same nervous thrill courses through Nate, the same pull in his chest. He counts the steps it takes him to get to Brad and then he can feel him, can feel the thickness of his arms, how solid his chest is, the cord of the muscles in his back that Nate can press his fist against.

Nate knows he's holding on for too long, a couple of extra seconds that make the difference, and even Brad's culminating pats on his back don't really stop him, only the meaning behind them. Brad looks at him a little strangely when they separate.

“Where the hell is your car?” Brad asks finally, looking winded.

“Yeah,” says Nate, swallowing. “Sorry about—I could have sworn I parked it in 4. I was just there. There’s the Airtrain,” and starts walking towards the escalator.

“My luggage?” Brad reminds him.

“Right,” says Nate. And—of course. “Also, there’s coffee in the car. I hope you’re a fan of cold Dunkin.”

“Nothing better. I hope it’s all congealed at the bottom, too.”

“What kind of coffee have you been drinking?” Nate asks, horrified, as they get to the spinning baggage. The usual back-and-forth, easy and smooth, is a little off-kilter, and Nate feels it until he stops in front of his Saab. Brad keeps walking for a few steps until he notices Nate behind him. He doubles back and looks at the car.

“What happened to the Volvo?”

“Oh, shit,” says Nate. “I forgot you were looking for another car.”

“This,” Brad says, “is the new car?”

“Uh, yes,” says Nate, a little offended.

“Book bonus?”

Nate pauses with Brad’s laptop bag. “No.”

“Just asking,” says Brad blithely, getting into the car.

Nate is too preoccupied with trying not to get lost to make small talk, and the half-hour back to his apartment is spent in the white noise of asking for directions and reading road signs, and Brad constantly adjusting his legroom.

As soon as they step in the door, Nate forgets what he usually does with his hands, and possibly his mouth. Brad doesn’t seem to notice, looking around with a vaguely inspective gaze.

“Are you looking for cracks in the ceiling?” asks Nate.

“Water damage in the molding,” Brad says. “Common in many Soviet buildings.” He smirks at Nate. “Where are the other six families that live here?”

“Will you ever find something nice to say about any of my apartments? It’s the best I could do on short notice.”

Brad hums and continues searching the ceiling for imaginary flaws. Nate has been practicing this attempt at being casual for the better part of the week, so when he lies, “It’s not usually so crazy at the airport,” he hopes his sigh comes off as convincing and only barely theatrical. “We didn't get to even say hello properly.”

“And what would constitute a proper hello?” says Brad, raising an eyebrow, and as Brad’s bag slides off his shoulder Nate moves toward him.

This time Nate knows he can hold on as long he likes. This time Brad’s arms are warm and wrapping around his shoulders; his cheek is just unshaven enough for Nate to feel against his own; his fingers digging into Nate’s coat and through to his back are hard points of pressure that send sparks down Nate’s spine.

Nate doesn't know what previous memory to assign to this. He doesn’t know what this feels like. It’s not high school, it’s not anyone’s previous touch; there’s no comparison for it in his mind. God, he's fucked.

Nate feels Brad draw back a little and then they're kissing, in the middle of Nate’s new apartment, still practically in the doorway, slowly, with their arms wound tight around each other. Nate’s neck aches from where it’s jammed against his shoulder against Brad’s insistent mouth bearing down, but he doesn’t care. It's slow and close-mouthed and at one point they're just pressing their lips together, over and over and over.

But it breaks, and Nate only allows it because he's stupidly expecting more, wanting to see that half-lidded look of Brad’s—when Brad picks up his bag again and asks where to put it.

Okay.

“Wherever,” Nate ventures.

Brad gives him a look and says, “I’ve never actually been here before, so if you want me to put it in the bedroom, you’re going to have to show me where that is.”

: : :

The few days before Christmas leave the city bare; DC is gutted, storefronts dark and the streets devoid of life. The cold air stings as they step out from the restaurant’s thick vinyl curtains.

“Fuck, it’s freezing,” says Nate, rubbing his shoulders. “Should have taken the car. Now the metro’s closed.”

“Why a Saab?” Brad asks, looking unaffected by the cold. “It’s the most generic car out there.”

“DC doesn’t have a Maybach dealership yet, so my options are limited.”

“They probably use Saabs in place of other cars in commercials.”

“Is there any property of mine that you won’t criticize?” Nate asks. “What car would you get?”

“I wouldn’t get a car.”

“For the sake of argument.”

“Japanese engineering is infinitely more reliable, and a Corolla can accelerate faster than any Audi tanker.”

“Saab is Swedish,” Nate reminds him.

“It’s a rice cracker.”

“What?”

“My best friend used to say that,” Brad says seriously. “It’s a rice cracker. You can eat it, you can not eat it—you’ll be a little bit more full, but what’s the point.” He shrugs and looks over at Nate.

“What on Earth are you talking about?”

Brad cracks a grin.

“You are such a bullshitter,” says Nate, smiling back and knocking shoulders.

“What time is it?” asks Brad.

“Uh, twelve-thirty.”

“This is a joke. Everything is closed.”

“There’s a bookstore that’s open twenty-four hours.”

Brad stops to look at him.

Nate laughs. “I didn’t say I want to go, I’m just correcting you.”

They walk a little longer down M Street, hands in pockets. They stop at the only CVS open and wander around so Nate can pretend that the bag of Twizzlers was an impulse buy, but he’s not wearing gloves so he can’t even eat them.

Finally Brad says, “Do you want to just—”

“Yes,” says Nate.

“You’re not going to wake me up to go running, are you?” asks Nate and instantly regrets giving Brad the idea.

Brad cocks an eyebrow at him. “Are _you_?”

“God, no,” breathes Nate.

Brad laughs. “The LT getting soft?”

“Weekends are sacred.”

“It’s a Tuesday night,” Brad says.

“Right.”

“I was worried _you_ ’d wake me up at ass o’clock with some yoga shit.”

“Where does this insane idea that I do yoga come from?”

Brad just laughs, letting Nate get to the door.

“I’m serious, Brad. This is the second time you’ve said something about yoga.”

“Don’t lie to me and tell me you don’t try to meditate.”

But as soon as they enter the apartment and start yawning, Nate realizes he’s come to a Rubicon he doesn’t know how he’s going to cross.

“Do you want a drink?” he asks, turning to Brad.

“Sure,” says Brad.

Nate doesn’t move, a hand on the cool marble counter.

“Do you want one?” asks Brad.

“No.”

There was a time and a place not too long ago or far away where Nate made decisions. Now that there are no lives but his own depending on it, the impetus is gone.

“Good night, Nate,” says Brad, and disappears into the bedroom.

It takes Nate ten minutes to move away from the counter he’s leaning on, like waking up from a heavy sleep. He walks through his bedroom and into the ensuite. There’s a way to twist the doorknob to get the lock open, but the handle gives easily, unlocked.

The shower curtain is moving slightly, the patter of the shower spray interrupted by Brad’s exhales, spitting out water. Nate draws the curtain aside, and Brad reels around. His eyes are closed, shampoo lather in his hair and eyes.

“Nate,” he says, reaching out blindly.

Brad’s lips are slippery and bitter with the taste of soap, and Nate only remembers he’s fully dressed by the time Brad’s tugged him halfway into the shower. He’s out of one of the sleeves of his sweater when Brad shuts off the water and pulls him in. Nate can feel the ugly fluorescent light behind his closed eyelids, the cold water seeping into his socks, Brad’s cold arms, his hot, slick mouth.

His belt is unbuckled but he’s not sure how, Brad’s hands everywhere—his shoulders, his face, his chest, palming the front of his briefs.

Nate tears the sweater off, over his head, and slams the water back on. Brad’s mouth is hot, burning, a counterpoint to the cold in the bathroom and the water dripping steadily down the back of his shirt. Brad’s tongue is slick and insistent, and his hands come to wrap around Nate’s biceps, fingers digging in.

Nate only moves closer, pressing Brad into the wall under the spray. Brad cries out into his mouth.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Yeah,” mutters Nate, licking sloppily into Brad’s mouth. “Yeah.”

“Handle in my back,” says Brad, and pushes Nate back against the wall.

Brad has a hold on the collar of the shirt Nate’s still in, fuck, and drags his fist upward, against the wall, until Nate’s pinned at the neck and—oh, fuck. Brad’s cock drags against his through his boxers, and Nate—Nate wants that somewhere he can feel it.

Nate sinks to his knees, and Brad looks down, mouth open. “Don’t,” he grunts. “What—what are you doing?”

“Where do you think this is going?” breathes Nate, getting water in his face. Fuck, he’s so hard he has to spread his legs and it takes a lot of fucking control not to sink down completely and start rubbing off against the floor. Brad’s—Brad’s cock is so close to his mouth, and Brad is looking down at him, and Nate realizes he’s not sure what happens now, or at least how he’s going to make it happen. But Brad makes the decision for him and gets a hand in his hair, dragging him up and turning him around. Brad’s breathing heavy in his ear, and then his shirt is being wrenched off of him. He can feel Brad’s hard body pressing up against him.

It’s not that he want to do _something_ with Brad. It’s that he wants to do _something with Brad_. He’s never thought about getting fucked, not like this, but Jesus Christ, Brad’s hands digging into his ass makes him want things he’s never going to think about again without getting hard.

Then Brad gets a hand through the slit in his boxers and shoves them down completely. Nate’s mouth is open and he’s panting against the wall, and there’s water burning his eyes and it’s hard to breathe through the steam, and God, he feels the best he’s felt in a long fucking time.

: : :

“So what’s the plan?” Brad says in the morning, leaning against the door.

“Well, they keep talking about the storm that’s rolling in,” says Nate, pulling on his duck boots, “but I’m pretty sure we’ll escape it. I made an itinerary, but—Brad, it’s going to be snowing outside.”

“I’ve been made aware,” says Brad. “I’m wearing a sweater.”

Nate starts reaching into the closet.

“I’ve survived English winter,” Brad says. “I think I’ll live. What’s the plan?”

“We could just wander around the monuments, make the rounds,” says Nate. “We’ve got a few days, right? Do you want to do museums?”

“Do you really think I came here for the fucking museums?” Brad asks calmly, fiddling with his watch strap.

Nate doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he makes no reply and hides whatever is turning his mouth upwards in his shoulder. “Okay,” he says, tightening his laces. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s just hope everything isn’t closed,” Nate mutters as they leave his building. He regrets the pride that forced him to leave his earmuffs in his apartment.

“Why?” asks Brad.

“Inclement weather.”

“ _This_ is inclement weather?” Brad says, looking around. “It’s not even snowing.”

“If there’s an excuse to shut down government, they’ll do it,” says Nate. “There were two inches of snow last March, and every building was closed. I couldn’t even get soup.”

Brad shakes his head in wonder. “Bullshit.”

“Naval Museum might not be closed, though.”

“Lead the way, Captain.”

There’s no one in the subway to catch Nate passing his Metro card over to Brad at the turnstyles. Most of the subway cars are empty, but as the train screeches to a stop in front of them, Nate, like most of the passengers, doesn’t feel like jogging over to the next one. Nate watches Brad’s figure, staunch and solid, resist the swaying of the subway car. He wants to curl his fingers into the down of Brad’s jacket. He doesn’t.

A couple of sailors in NWUs get on with them at their transfer at L’Enfant. Nate avoids eye contact, holding onto stanchion by the subway doors. It’s muggy in the subway and though he knows it’ll be freezing outside, he tugs off his scarf and stuffs it in his pocket.

One of the sailors catches Brad’s eye and grins. Brad turns back to the window, hiding a smile in the crook of his elbow. He rests his head on his arm, looking at Nate.

“Squids,” he says.

Nate laughs. “I would never have pegged you as a guy who calls them ‘squids.’”

“Occasionally I do suffer from the pervasive brain rot of being around degenerates ninety-nine percent of the time.”

There’s a sudden influx of people at the Waterfront station. The sailors offer up their seats and walk over to Brad and Nate.

“Nice turtlenecks,” says Brad when they’re close enough.

The sailor laughs. Nate glances at his collar—Petty Officer, First Class. “Oh, come on. What are you, jarheads?”

“Like you couldn’t tell.”

“Yeah, nice haircut. It’s why I came over. Who the hell else stands on the subway at ease?”

Brad doesn’t look down to check his position, but Nate can tell he almost did. The sailor can too, and laughs. He extends a hand.

“Jones. We’re over at Anacostia.”

“Brad,” says Brad.

“Point taken,” says the sailor, nodding. “Where you guys off to? Eastern Market?”

“Not from here,” says Brad. “Well, I’m not. He is,” jerking a shoulder towards Nate.

“Nate,” Nate offers, shaking their hands.

“You guys Seabees?” notices Brad.

“Yeah. You’re welcome.”

Brad just raises an eyebrow at him.

“Oh my God, you guys are unbearable. Are you on leave or what?”

“I am,” says Brad, and looks over to Nate.

“I’m on permanent leave,” says Nate.

“Did you say terminal?” asks the sailor as they rattle through a tunnel. “Sorry.”

“Uh, yeah,” says Nate. Brad doesn’t look at him.

“Oh, congrats, man,” says Jones. “Time for a wife and kids?”

Oh, for the love of Christ, thinks Nate. In a stroke of the kind of luck he never seems to get, they trundle into their station.

“This is us,” says Nate, and lets go of his sweaty hold on the stanchion.

“Nice meeting you guys,” says the sailor, and the winks. “But don’t let me catch you in a bar. Merry Christmas.”

“You won’t,” says Brad, and raises a hand, “but sure. Happy Hanukkah.”

On the escalator up, Brad suddenly laughs.

Nate turns to look at him. “What?”

He shakes his head, smiling. “Nothing.”

“Happy Hanukkah,” remembers Nate. “Or is that over already?”

Brad laughs again, and Nate will play dumb—or, in this case, there’s no acting involved—about holidays as long as it takes to keep Brad smiling.

“No. That’s Sunday. Same as Christmas this year.”

They get off at the Navy Yard metro stop and look around.

“Well, this is desolate,” says Brad.

“Yeah,” says Nate, looking around and rubbing the back of his neck, “this isn’t the best neighborhood.”

“Have you never been here before?”

“Not really,” Nate admits. “Once, but it was snowing so hard I got out of the metro and wandered around before just going back.”

“Semper persevere,” says Brad absently, in what is probably his approximation of a Latin accent. He turns his eyes toward the uncleared streets. “The Corps clearly instilled in you the virtue of determination.”

Nate laughs and says, “Nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.”

Brad stares at him.

“It’s Cicero!” cries Nate. “It’s famous.”

Brad just shakes his head. “Who are you? Did you do this in the desert? No wonder Gunny looked so constipated all the time. He was fucking confused.”

Nate starts looking around.

“Got a map?” Brad asks.

“No,” says Nate, looking at the brick wall looming above them. “Shouldn’t be too far away. There’s a sign there.”

It’s started to rain a little, and it seems like sleet will follow. They press close under the eaves of the wall around the Yard. A bronze cannon glitters in the puddle gathering around it.

“Want a picture by the pretty cannon, Brad?”

“Want a picture _in_ the pretty cannon, sir?”

Brad doesn’t seem to notice the ‘sir.’ Maybe it’s just the way you’d sometimes call your teacher 'mom,' thinks Nate. Maybe. Maybe not.

They wait for the Honda to clear the guard shack vehicle barrier at the Navy Yard gates and come up to the window.

“Hi,” says Nate. “How can we get through to the museum?”

“You guys got military ID?” the guard asks, looking at Brad.

“Yeah, brother,” says Brad, and pulls his out.

Nate doesn’t. He doesn’t even pat his pockets like he forgot or isn’t sure if he has it with him. He knows he doesn’t have it; he put it away after the incident at the bar, and he doesn’t really frequent places where the ID would get him a free meal. Chili’s does not sit well with his stomach.

Neither does this situation. The guard looks expectantly at Nate, and then Brad has to say: “He’s with me. Does he need to have ID?”

“Any federal ID?” the guard asks. “DoD, anything?”

“No,” apologizes Nate.

The guard looks between them and then says, “It’s just for an escort. Have you been around here before?”

“No,” says Brad.

“Yeah, in that case I’ll just call the escort anyway. Just take a seat over there and he’ll be over in a couple.”

“Thanks,” Brad says, and they sit down on a cold bench.

Brad is rubbing his shoulders up and down.

“It’s fine,” Nate says.

“What?” says Brad, turning his head.

“Nothing.” Nate looks away.

“Okay,” Brad grunts, and gets up to chat with the guard. Nate watches them—watches Brad, his breath white in the December chill, wringing his hands in the cold.

The museum, it turns out, is excellent. And empty, which is partly what makes it so excellent. He and Brad split up after their initial foray into the submarine room, walking through at different paces. Nate skims through the words, unless it’s some interactive exhibit, and finishes his initial walkthrough of the museum and loses track of Brad. Every so often, he’ll catch glimpses of Brad’s navy sweater and blond hair disappearing in the small doorways, weaving in and out of exhibits and between the anti-aircraft guns.

Nate pauses behind the wheel of some 18th century schooner and looks out across the hall, where Brad has stopped before a small photograph nailed to the wall. When he glances away and then back, Brad is gone.

Nate goes to the bathroom and then starts wandering around, looking over anything he might have missed. He finds Brad sitting in the little movie theater, watching what’s advertised on the posters lining the projection screen as _Action in the North Atlantic_. Brad is staring at Humphrey Bogart saying something on screen.

“Hey,” says Nate.

Brad looks up and seems to force a smile out of himself. Nate wishes, for a second, that they could go back to a time and a place and a relationship when Nate would have—could have—come up beside him and taken his shoulder, clapped him on the back and let his hand rest there. Now every touch of his makes him feel different; Nate doesn’t let himself touch Brad in public much. It feels like he can’t control it, might let it spiral out of control. He trusts Brad with most of the touching between them. So he simply watches Brad look through the wall the movie is played against and waits for Brad to look at him again. When he does, Nate asks: “Ready?”

Brad nods, getting up and stretching his legs. “Yeah,” he says, brushing past Nate in the narrow archway to the main room of the museum. The brush isn’t any slower or more deliberate than any other, but it feels tense, meaningful, to Nate. He follows Brad, takes his coat from Brad when Brad throws it to him, watches Brad shove some crumpled bills into the donations slot. They thank their escort and Brad grabs the Navy Yard newspaper from a rack on their way out onto the River Walk. The yard before the fence and the docks is a graveyard of anchors and ship parts; the shiny copper glints in the sudden sun.

The clouds have cleared, but the wind still cuts their warm faces, flushed from the heat in the museum. Nate flips up the collar of his fleece. “Where do you want to go now?”

“Let’s just walk around,” says Brad.

“That was great,” says Nate. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

Brad hums in agreement, and Nate doesn’t push it, just looks up and squints at the weak sunlight reflecting off of the USS Barry.

“Wish we went here on that eighth grade field trip,” Nate says. “Instead of the Newseum. Although I might’ve ended up joining the Navy.”

Brad grunts.

“Wouldn’t have made a difference to you, huh?” Nate grins.

“I always knew what I wanted,” Brad says suddenly, shrugging. “Since I knew the Corps existed. But before that, I knew I wanted to be _that_.”

“In the womb, you mean?” says Nate, still grinning, but Brad doesn’t respond, just keeps walking. “Well,” Nate tries again, “you grew up and now you’re—” and this change in voice wasn’t supposed to happen, he thinks, “—you know. You’re...” He trails off.

He knows that’s inadequate, but Brad doesn’t reply. Brad just waits a while and then says, “I looked through all of those photos in there, all the guys on the subs and ships, and—am I _that_?”

Nate doesn’t say anything. Brad continues, “It’s not like I’ve lost what it means. It’s just that I don’t know if it exists anymore. In me or for me or anywhere else.”

Brad stops, leaning over railing, looking into the dirty water eddying around the old ship. He glances over his shoulder at Nate, who comes closer. Brad turns his gaze back at the water, hands holding his elbows. Nate hesitates, and then curls a hand over Brad’s. He’s just thankful Brad doesn’t flinch or move away. He doesn’t know what he was expecting.

“I think about that, too, sometimes,” says Nate.

“Do you?” says Brad, squinting over the water. Nate doesn’t know if he should ignore his tone.

“Yeah. I do.”

“I think we’re thinking about different things.”

Nate doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s probably right. Brad takes his hand out from under Nate’s and straightens up. They start walking again, and Nate tells himself the silence is comfortable like it was in Iraq.

They stop again on the Waterfront bridge.

“You think it’ll be clear enough to walk back?” Nate asks, looking behind them. The metro station’s M is a green blur beside the red dot of the stoplight.

When there’s no answer, Nate looks over. “What?”

“I need to go back,” says Brad abruptly. Nate knows better than to look at him. He’s not sure he has any authority here anymore.

“The last time—” He breaks off again, and Nate realizes they’re not talking about his apartment. Nate stares at Brad’s reflection in the water below them. He looks into Brad’s rippling, aqueous eyes, pretends he’s doing the same above the water, until a bubble disrupts the surface of the river.

“Did we fucking fight this hard to get this far behind?” comes Brad’s voice somewhere beside him. Nate keeps staring at the murky water. He doesn’t know what Brad’s talking about anymore, and he has too many guesses.

Nate figures it’s his time to contribute. “I don’t know, Brad,” he says.

Finally, Brad mutters, “We get better. Only to watch things get worse.”

“I think it’s the other way around,” Nate ventures. He means it, but the words have a hollow ring to them.

“For you,” says Brad.

“For me,” agrees Nate. “For me.”

Brad nods like he was waiting for something, and straightens up. “I’m starving.”

Chinatown is uncharacteristically empty, too, no crowd engulfing F Street beneath the Verizon Center’s red neon letters. A giant banner of that Russian kid that got drafted last year—even Nate knows about that—is hanging off the side of the building.

“Want to watch a game?” asks Nate, narrowly avoiding a rush of water from the eaves. “We could probably get Caps tickets. Cheap seats, but they’re seats.”

“No.”

Nate is surprised. “Childhood trauma with the puck?”

“I don’t feel like contributing to America’s misplaced worship of athletes.”

“I have a hard time believing those kinds of sentiments don’t come from direct interaction with the wrong end of a stick,” says Nate.

“Nothing to do with injuries,” says Brad. “I just don’t see the use in watching a bunch of grown men participate in arena entertainment.”

“I think it’s called ‘showcasing their skills and talents.’”

“If they’re just ‘showcasing’ them and not using them for anything productive,” says Brad, “what’s the point?”

“Bringing excellence to sport? Not everything has to serve some global purpose.”

Brad just looks at him and gives him a small, strange smile. “Yeah? You think so?”

“I don’t know,” says Nate.

“That seems to the standard answer,” Brad says nonchalantly, and it rubs Nate the wrong way. Brad’s constant not-quite-ambiguities are wearing on him. He wants to ask if Brad’s fucking bored.

“Yeah, well,” Nate says curtly. “My situational awareness hasn’t extended any farther since we last considered it.”

“Far enough,” Brad replies, and Nate can’t tell if he’s saying that or “fair enough.” Neither answer is particularly gratifying.

The Fuel Pizza they end up at is too hot, and Nate starts fumbling with his gloves and jacket as soon as they get a seat at the bar by the window.

The flat screen TV on the wall above the to-go menus is replaying clips of the president’s primetime Oval Office address.

“Not only can we win the war in Iraq—we are winning the war in Iraq,” Bush keeps saying, it seems over and over, on a loop, with the newscaster occasionally breaking in. Something about Tony Blair comes up. The yellow ticker at the bottom is streaming odd, disjointed phrases: SENATE PASSES 6 MONTH EXTENSION OF PATRIOT ACT — MUGGER KILLED BY LION IN SOUTH AFRICA — BOMB EXPLODES NEAR NIGHTCLUB IN SPAIN — NYC TRANSIT STRIKE ENDS —

''This is a completely different situation from the situation a year ago," says Tony Blair.

Nate looks over his shoulder at Brad. “You think so?”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Brad, staring at the menus. “I’m not over there. I’m playing sandbox in Blair’s backyard.”

“I wouldn’t know either,” says Nate. He wouldn’t. He hasn’t been keeping up because of the sheer volume of things that needed keeping up with. “Maybe it just seems different because we’re not there. Or because we’re not the same men here as we were there.”

Brad’s eyes are suddenly unreadable. “Which one are you?”

“What?” asks Nate, confused.

“Are you the man in Iraq, or the man here?”

Nate doesn’t know how to respond. “Both.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s my answer.”

Brad is silent.

“What about you?” says Nate.

“They’re one man.”

It seems like the news has let go of Bush for a second and has started in on Blair. _Completely different situation...completely different situation…completely different situation…_

“Completely fucking different,” Brad breaks through suddenly. “Ask Ronald Schulz’s widow.”

The waiter squeezes in between them with their food just as _Who’ll Stop the Rain_ comes on over the restaurant's sound system.

“Man, this weather is an act of God,” says the server, setting down their garlic knots. “Enjoy.”

“Yeah,” says Nate, distracted. “Thanks.”

Nate finishes first and wipes his hands. Brad is chewing slowly and methodically, looking out the window.

“You ever think about what—if not—”

“No,” interrupts Brad, taking the last bite of his calzone. He wipes his hands and leans back in his seat. Nate’s not even sure what he was going to ask. If not the war? If not the Marines? If not him?

Brad clears his throat, pushing the plate away. “Thanks,” he says.

“Sure,” says Nate. “It’s good, huh?”

“I mean for—”

“Oh,” says Nate. “Yeah. Of course. I’m glad we had time for that.”

Brad is asleep—or appearing to be—by the time Nate comes out of the bathroom that night. The day wasn’t an argument, Nate knows. He’s not angry. He’s just more—desperate.

The distance between them on the bed seems infinitely farther than when Nate knew Brad was asleep on the couch. Nate stares at the line of Brad’s shoulder, and then rolls over to grope around on the nightstand for his phone.

: : :

It’s raining by the time they get to the Memorial Bridge, solitary figures by the empty highway, and Nate flicks his hood up. The fog is so thick it’s obscured the top of the Washington Monument, and not too far away the skeleton of the Lincoln Memorial rises through the mist. Brad whistles and Nate turns around.

“It ever freeze over?” he asks.

“Not while I’ve been here,” says Nate, walking over to him. “But it did, back in the 1800s. Maybe a couple times in the last century.”

“Makes the 1800s seem recent,” says Brad mysteriously. Nate looks at him and he adds, “When you put it like that.”

Brad ambles over to one of the statues. “Valor,” he reads. “What’s the other one?”

“Valor,” says Nate absently. “Oh, sorry. This one’s Valor, that one’s Sacrifice. Valor’s the one with the shield, Sacrifice has the kid.”

Brad is still reading the inscription, blowing into his clasped hands. Nate takes the gloves out of his pocket and holds them out. “Here.”

“I’m good,” says Brad.

Nate tucks them back into his pocket, and focuses on thinking about times and geographical locations and clear directions. “Want to walk to Virginia?”

“Let’s do it,” says Brad.

Nate’s arm seems to rise of its own accord, trying for Brad’s shoulders in a weird abortive motion. Nate’s brain reconsiders half way.

“What are you doing?” Brad asks.

“I don’t know,” says Nate. To be fair, he really doesn’t.

Brad just gives him a look and stuffs his hands in his jacket.

Nate isn’t sure why he thought it would be a good idea to bring Brad to Arlington, but it was just there. He’s sure Brad’s been here already.

“Have you been here?” he asks anyway.

“Yes.”

The park is emptying out as it gets darker. Nate can tell they’re not tourists visiting Arlington before Christmas, and looks down at the cobblestoned driveway.

“Closes at five,” the parking guard warns. “Last changing of the guard is in about fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you,” says Nate.

“If you need help finding your way around,” the man directs, “you can stop by the information center located to your left down the road.”

“We’re fine.”

“All right, sir,” says the guard, with the solemnity of talking to the bereaved. Nate almost wants to turn back and tell him they’re not here for anyone.

Arlington is eerie in the milky mist swirling around between the tombstones, and Nate gets off the circular track he wanted to follow. They’re somewhere by the Memorial Amphitheater when he realizes he can’t see Brad and suddenly hears approaching horses’ hooves strike the pavement, like a heartbeat.

He’s going to start hyperventilating like that time during the gas drill in Iraq. He tries to will it away and presses his fist to his mouth, hunched over. _Wait it out, wait it out, wait out_ , he tells himself. Fuck. He hears the loose gravel in the road crunch.

“Nate,” Brad calls.

Nate takes a sharp inhale and suddenly feels sick. And it’s not a headache, it’s some churning sudden nausea that comes over him and leaves his gut weak. Fuck. Fuck, he’s in Arlington and he’s going to vomit and they’re standing in the middle of fucking Farragut Drive. He spots a trash can at the last second and leans over it. When he straightens up, he’s more surprised that he actually threw up than he is disgusted. He turns around, gingerly wiping his mouth to find Brad looking at him.

“Nate,” he says, and if Nate has to strain to hear the concern in his voice, it doesn’t matter.

Nate stands back up, leaning on the side of the trashcan. “No,” he says. There’s nothing Brad is doing or can do. “I’m fine.”

What is going on? he thinks. He almost wishes he could blame it on the kinds of emotions you’re allowed to have in a cemetery, and immediately feels awful. But his thoughts are racing so fast he can barely catch glimpses of them. Brad is already behind the mast of the USS Maine, and Nate is still there in the middle of the road.

He doesn’t know what to do. There’s no responsibility involved here—no consequences for his actions. He could fuck it all up; no one’s life but his own is hanging in the balance. Nate has been waiting all day to do something. Anything, he realizes. Bring up his stupid fucking accident, Brad’s still-undiscussed presence in the hospital room, make a joke about it if he has to. Other things, too—mention England. Touch Brad. Things that he might not have thought twice about before they started this—whole thing.

Is it worth it? he thinks. Is it worth the fumbling and self-censorship and whatever bullshit they’ve got going on now, the half-touches that might mean something but don’t, that never make it to the real thing—traded for the possibilities of yesteryear, what they could have had instead of what they didn’t have, when he didn’t have this constant self-policing and monitoring? Was it a fair trade, what they had in Iraq—for this? No, he figures, but he knew all along it never was. The difference is that now he’s not so sure it was worth it, either. He could have had all this before, all of the lingering looks and shared glances in the desert, just without the certainty that occasionally Brad could have the same inopportune thoughts he did, thoughts and mundane jerk-off fantasies about another life. But Nate doesn’t have certainty. All he has now is the vague possibility, when before he hadn’t had to guess at all, because he didn’t know there was an answer to be had. He likes knowing, he tells himself, but knowing what? Half of a relationship for a whole friendship? Fuck, thinks Nate, and then the worst thought, one he’s been staving off, comes up: he’s made the wrong choice again.

Nate looks at Brad craning his neck up at the top of the monument, and realizes it’s useless to pinpoint when his life started being defined by the things he didn’t let himself do.

“Take the subway,” says Brad once the parking guard waves them off of the grounds.

Nate turns around from his step on the escalator, slowly descending when he notices Brad’s still at the top.

“What?” he says, jumping a few steps to close the distance.

“I’ll walk,” says Brad.

Nate jogs the rest of the way up. “No,” he says. “Come on.”

Brad shakes his hand off inelegantly. “I’ll find my way.”

Nate doesn’t want to say it, but—“Brad—”

“I’m—you need some rest,” Brad replies, but doesn’t meet his eyes.

Brad leaves him standing there, and halfway down the escalator he suddenly jogs back up a few steps, but sees Brad’s retreating back and gives up. Realistically, he doesn’t want to face Brad in any confined space right now. The green line back to Farragut is thankfully almost empty, and Nate gets a seat.

When he gets back to his apartment, he drinks half a liter of flat seltzer water and collapses face down on the couch. It seems like the easiest thing to do. He wakes up to Brad fixing the chain lock and unwinding his scarf. Nate starts formulating his next quasi-apology, quasi-confession when Brad interrupts his still slow-moving thoughts.

“Ray’s in DC,” he announces. “Stuck on a layover. Says he wants to see if you’re around.”

Nate sits up too rapidly and black spots dance around his vision for a few seconds. “How does he know you’re here?”

Brad gives him a look, pulling out a chair. “He sent a message to the listserve.”

“Oh,” says Nate. “Is he here now?”

“That’s what he says.”

Nate considers it. “Shit, at the airport?”

“It would appear so.”

“Tell him—yes. Of course. Tell him yes, I’m around, I’ll meet him.”

“Are you sure?” asks Brad.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Nate replies. “Are you coming?”

Brad looks up from his phone. “Did you eat?”

“I had some crackers,” Nate lies, getting up and buttoning his flannel. “Have you seen my keys?”

Brad leans over and plucks them from between the couch cushions Nate had recently vacated. “He says the airline got him a hotel, he’s on the shuttle now. And,” says Brad, squinting at the greenish backlight of his Motorola, “he says just come to the bar ‘near the Marriott.’”

“Which Marriott?” says Nate, voice muffled and head and shoulders obscured by coats as he digs through the closet. He resurfaces to find Brad looking at him.

“Relax.”

“I’m relaxed,” says Nate.

“Nate.”

“Has he had dinner?” Nate’s got one arm through the sleeve of his parka. “You’re going to need a bigger jacket than that.”

They stand under the restaurant’s awning, hands shoved in pockets.

“LT!” cries Ray, bounding up to Nate and stopping short of a hug. “Captain. Oh my God, I don’t even know what to call you now.”

“Nate is fine,” says Nate, laughing. “Good to see you, Ray.”

Ray turns around, mock-nonchalant. “Oh, hello there, Bradley,” he says blithely. “Your mom says hi.”

“You two know each other?” says Nate, and is surprised he’s handling this so well. Well, not this. Handling himself seems the more truthful answer.

Ray grabs Brad by the middle. Brad makes the appropriate face and attempts at shoving Ray off, but still curls an arm around Ray’s head. He puts a stop to it when Ray starts pretending to hump his leg, and holds him out at arm’s length.

“Are you on Ripped Fuel again?”

“Nope,” says Ray, winking. “Bigger and better things.”

The hostess comes by and tells them their kitchen is closed.

Nate turns around. “If—”

“It’s all good, homes,” says Ray, following the waiter to their booth. “I already had dinner at the hotel on the meal voucher, and they were like, ‘Oh, this doesn’t count for alcohol,’ so I was like, fuck it, I’m taking Delta’s business elsewhere. Since when does alcohol not count as a meal? Fuck that.”

Nate slides into the circular booth after him.

“Man, what the hell is Brad doing here?” says Ray, throwing his mittens on the table.

“What kind of a grown ass man wears mittens?” mutters Brad.

“I don’t know,” says Nate, and it’s not too much of a lie. “Brad?”

“Business trip,” is Brad’s laconic answer.

“Who cares,” says Ray. “Let’s talk about the fucking LT. Captain.”

“What about me?”

“I don’t know what to do with this newfound freedom.” Ray’s eyes light up. “Holy shit, LT, I could fight you right now if I wanted.”

“Define ‘could,’” says Nate.

“No NJP,” Ray grins.

“You’d probably get more than an NJP.”

“No, you couldn’t,” says Brad.

“No,” Ray agrees thoughtfully. “Brad wouldn’t let me. Brad would protect me. Right, Brad?”

“No,” says Brad.

Nate starts laughing. “You’re welcome to try.”

“Oh my God, LT is so macho now,” says Ray. “No wonder you’re all up in his—”

“Ray.”

After two beers and a shot of—of all things—Fireball, Ray declares, “Another round for LT and his impending date with Barbara Walters.”

Either Nate’s drunk off of two beers and a little liquor or Brad’s head moves unnaturally fast to fix him with a stare. “You’re going to be on Barbara Walters?”

“No,” he says. “Ray—”

“Jesus, Jesus, I’m kidding,” says Ray. “It looked like Daddy was gonna hit Mommy at the dinner table for a second there. What’s wrong with you, Brad?”

“Nothing,” says Brad, and downs the rest of his beer. “It’s a good book. Deserves publicity.”

Nate looks at him.

“Everyone’s writing books now!” says Ray. “I’ll write a book. You’ll write a book. We’ll be the Oprah book club battalion. Seriously. We’re so fucking literary.”

“I’d be very surprised if you wrote a book,” says Brad. “Seeing as you can’t read.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Brad. You and I are completely equal in our linguistic knowledge.” Ray leans forward. “You’re my _equal_ , Brad.”

“That stills remains in the realm of your never-to-be-realized fantasies,” Brad responds, and raises two fingers.

“IKEA instructions do not count,” says Ray. “I don’t care how hard that shit is to put together.”

“Hebrew does.”

“You speak Hebrew?” Nate cuts in, looking at him in surprise.

Brad looks up with a wry smile. “Didn’t say I understood it. I can just read it. Had to get through my bar mitzvah somehow.”

“If I see you in one of those little hats, I can die happy,” says Ray, giddy. “It will have all been worth it, you Hebrew motherfucker.”

Nate doesn’t hear him. He knows how he must look at Brad, but Jesus. He doesn’t know what this is. Every time Brad tells him something, peels back another thin layer—

But Ray must notice, because he says, “So, what—you two are buddies now?”

“No, Ray,” says Brad, and Nate feels his stomach drop. “Adults call it ‘friends.’”

He’s not sure if that helps the vertigo situation in his stomach, but Ray retorts, “Oh, colleagues, are we? Is he a good drinking buddy, Brad? He’s not actually a pussy, right?”

Nate bursts out laughing.

“No, he’s not,” Brad affirms.

“What do you mean, ‘actually?’” Nate interjects. “Are you trying to confirm something?”

“So anyway,” says Ray, “what’s _your_ book gonna be about, Brad?”

“Our tragic love affair,” Brad says seriously.

“You and the LT? Isn’t that what Reporter’s book was about?”

“No, that was about your mother’s tragic love affair with her brother and how it spawned you.”

“Actually, it might have been about Trombley and his fucking M-16.” Ray scratches his nose with the same hand that’s holding his beer and then points his finger at Nate. Brad scowls at the beer sloshing over the sides of the glass. “Sir, you called him ‘cerebral.’ We don’t use words like that in Nevada, Missouri, so I’m assuming that means you called him dreamy.”

Nate must have been silent for long enough to become suspicious, because Brad says, “I’ll make him stop.”

“It’s late anyway,” says Nate, half-rising and taking his keys from the table. “You should probably sleep before your flight.”

“Oh,” says Ray, “It’s okay. You don’t have to offer me your home.”

“More like sacrifice,” says Brad. “I don’t think the LT has that kind of insurance.”

“I’m staying at the same hotel Brad’s at,” Ray says.

“Okay, well,” Nate collects himself enough to say, “I hope to see you again, Ray.”

“Count on it, LT,” says Ray. “Buddy.” He scrunches his nose. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna stick to LT.”

Brad turns to Nate. “Nice seeing you.”

“Uh, yeah,” says Nate. “You too. See you later,” and prays that Ray doesn’t notice.

“I’m gonna empty the tank before we go,” says Ray. “I feel like a fucking racehorse.”

Brad comes up to him at the bar just as Nate is knocking back the double whiskey he barely remembers ordering. Brad stares at the unlit cigarette in his hand.

“Are you getting drunk?” Brad asks wryly.

“Just let me know where you end up,” says Nate, shoving his hand into his pocket.

“Nate.”

Nate slides a few bills towards the bartender and pulls up the hood of his parka. Brad pushes away his hand and digs a twenty out of his own pocket.

“Don’t serve him,” Brad tells the bartender, who ignores them both.

Nate knows he has been pushing it all day and all evening. He’s a little drunk from the absurd double whiskey and all that’s playing through his head is the way he had been prodding Brad the entire night. At one point, away from Ray, he held onto Brad’s shoulder and didn’t let go until Brad clapped on the back and loudly called him “buddy.” That was a little sobering, but Nate decides to sulk for a little while more as he makes the cold walk back to the apartment. Nate wordlessly walks into the Safeway on L Street and stands looking at the frozen foods aisle for a while. In his peripheral vision he sees someone at the end of the aisle and doesn’t have to look twice to know it’s Brad, and he’s just drunk enough that the alcohol has numbed his curiosity at how the hell Brad found him. Brad comes to stand by him, hands in his pockets, staring at the Or-Ida Fries.

“Saw you come in here when you took a turn,” he explains. “So. Crinkle-cut or what?”

“You didn’t actually get a hotel room,” says Nate, staring at the cold misting and swirling around in the freezer.

“No,” says Brad.

“This is stupid,” says Nate, and then something makes him suddenly snap: “Were you going to?”

“What are you talking about?”

Nate doesn’t say anything. Predictably, Brad sighs.

“What do you want from me, Nate?”

Nate is fully aware that he’s being petty and petulant, which makes it worse.

“Honestly,” says Nate, “not that much.”

They stand there for a little while until Brad slowly goes to reach for the door handle and pull out the fries. He maintains eye contact with Nate until Nate reaches out and stops him.

“Knock it off.”

“You laughed, though,” Brad points out.

“I don’t know,” says Nate. “I just—am I fucking nuts? Why do I always feel like I’m trying to find an answer to questions no one asked? What are we doing here?”

“What’s wrong with what we’re doing now?”

Nate thinks about it. It’s more than he allowed himself to dream about a year ago. “Nothing. I—I don’t know. I just—I want to be able to—do things together. Be on the same wavelength again.” He’s drunk, after all, he can let himself do this in a Safeway at eleven pm, but he feels he should probably qualify it with, “Is that pathetic?”

Either Brad’s avoiding eye contact or Nate is. “That’s out of my control.”

“I know,” says Nate. “I just want to get a fucking grip on this. All we have between the two of us is time, and I don’t know what to do with that.”

“It sounds like you just want to hang out,” says Brad, and Nate actually has to laugh at that one. He’s not sure if it actually comes out as a laugh or an exasperated exhale. His vision starts going blurry, but he controls his voice. Since when is he the kind of person to have a fight in a Safeway? Or a fight at all?

“Yeah, Brad. I want to hang out,” he says, pulling up the collar of his coat and walking through the automatic doors. He’s greeted by the frigid air, and now that he’s out of the store, he’s not sure what’s worse—fighting in a Safeway or trying to avoid it by leaving the Safeway.

The melodrama doesn’t seem to escape Brad, who follows him, a step away. “I’m not being sarcastic. I’m having a hard time figuring out what you want from this.”

Nate stops by an abandoned shopping cart. Maybe Brad’s right. Either Nate can’t articulate it at all or he isn’t finding the right words. Maybe reality, or at least a stab at realism—who the fuck knows, at this point—is getting in the way. It seems like he always felt he knew what he wanted, but he’s not sure now. They can’t go back, there’s nowhere to move forward. Friendship? Sex? The words seem inadequate. It always seems like he knows before he actually sees Brad. Why can’t he ever figure this out?

He’ll go for the easy shots now, though, take what he can get.

“Right now,” Nate says quietly, “I want to go home. With you.”

“I can do that,” says Brad, sounding relieved behind him. He starts saying something about the fucking fries.

“Fuck the fries,” says Nate. He turns around to face him. “You don’t have to do me favors.”

“I’m not doing you any fucking favors,” says Brad. “If we’re leaving, then let’s leave. My balls are in my fucking stomach cavity. And we should probably leave the Russians to themselves.”

Nate turns to where there’s a group of men standing by the trunk of a dark car, their breath puffing out into the cold. Leaving seems like a good idea. Brad starts laughing, and Nate tugs him out of the lot. Brad lets him.

 

“I’m going to put on music,” Nate says as they come into the apartment.

“I’m easier than that,” says Brad, throwing off his coat. “But okay.”

Nate goes to make sure his windows are closed and flicks on the stereo.

“ _Sexual Healing_?” says Brad. “Are you kidding me?”

“Will you believe me if I say that I have no idea how the hell that got on there?”

“Not for a second.”

“Then I’m going to have to go the defensive route. It’s not a bad song.”

“Sometimes,” Brad says, shuffling around the apartment and hanging his scarf across the back of the chair, “I’m not sure how I know you.”

Nate laughs, but it’s a comment he remembers. Sometimes he forgets who he and Brad are.

His plan was, originally, to jump Brad as soon as they got home, but they’re both moving around his apartment at a leisurely pace. Nate opens his refrigerator and peers into it for a moment before closing it.

“I hope you didn’t actually want the fries,” he says.

Brad laughs and stretches out on the sofa. The room is dim, the lamp casting soft shadows across the room. Brad’s eyes are pale in the gray light, and when he stretches to toe off his shoes against the arm of the couch, Nate can see the soft hair at the back of his neck, on his arms. When Brad leans back, his eyes track Nate’s every move. Door chain, chair, kitchen counter, light switch. Nate is standing in the middle of the room, looking at him. But when he moves closer, Brad stays the same—doesn’t rise, doesn’t move. Just keeps looking. Nate allows himself another step, and it feels like he hasn’t moved, for all the distance he’s covered. Something in Nate makes him turn away.

Nate doesn’t even know that he fell asleep when he wakes up, slumped against the headboard. His mouth is dry and he looks at the alarm clock.  Brad’s hair between his fingers felt so fucking real he could have sworn Brad was there, his weight on the other side of the mattress.

There’s no light coming from beneath the door, and he realizes Brad is still in the living room. Nate finds him on the couch, hands behind his head, under a throw blanket that doesn’t cover his feet. He can’t tell if Brad’s awake or not, but comes over anyway.

“Brad,” he says. He can see Brad’s eyelids move minutely, see Brad wake up. He doesn’t move.

“Get up,” Nate says, sitting down at the edge of the couch.

Brad opens his eyes and rises up on his elbows. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Bad dream,” he says, rubbing his eyes.

“Didn’t want to wake you.”

“Don’t do this to me,” Nate says softly. “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me anymore.”

Nate has built his life around logic and clarity and a bunch of other things he can’t seem to grasp right now. The book was part of that. Brad is decidedly not part of that, but—but he was, at one point.

He presses his lips to Brad’s, and tries to go back.

: : :

“This seems real,” Nate breathes, sometime early in the morning. Grey light is just starting to filter through his curtains. “This seems so fucking real.”

Brad curls an arm over his shoulders, pulls him inward without raising his face where it’s buried in the pillow, and Nate thinks he’s asleep until Brad says quietly, “You’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”

“Yeah,” says Nate. “I guess.” If he doesn’t feel like lying to himself. “I guess.”

“I’m sorry I said I didn’t believe you,” Brad murmurs, turning his face away.

“Yeah,” says Nate. He’s half-asleep. If he doesn’t remember this conversation in the morning, he won’t mind. His mouth is slack when he murmurs, “I don’t know what to do with this. I just—keep piling this shit on. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. You’re so fucking—important, and I don’t know.”

“Okay,” says Brad, and Nate’s not satisfied, never satisfied, he realizes, until he screws things up.

“Remember when you told me to think about what I was leaving when I left,” he says.

Brad hums.

“I didn’t want something else keeping me there. Would've been even worse than it making me leave.” He doesn’t know what he’s trying to explain.

“Don’t dump this on me,” mutters Brad.

“Dump?” Nate says, bewildered and unpleasantly jolted back into consciousness. “Dumping it on—I’m fucking sharing. I’m telling you that you—Brad, really?”

After a long silence, it’s clear that neither of them have fallen asleep.

“I’m sorry if I said something wrong today,” sighs Nate in defeat. “At the shipyard. Or—anywhere. Any other time.”

Brad doesn’t reply, and Nate figures he’ll let him pretend he’s asleep.

: : :

They’re leaning over the breakfast counter, taking turns stabbing forks at a tub of pasta between them as Nate squints at a map of DC he picked up from a 7-11 on the way home. There are huge orange dots over every 7-11 location, and he’s trying to ignore them as he considers a route.  
“Damn it,” he mumbles. “This way we won’t have enough time to go to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving.”

“Yeah, sounds like somewhere we couldn’t get in anyway,” says Brad through a mouthful of marinara-covered rigatoni.

“On a Thursday, though?” says Nate thoughtfully, circling a number on the map.

“They must have to keep the hordes away.”

Nate looks up, completely serious. “We’re going to have to prioritize. I miscalculated. We could probably do one of the Smithsonians we didn’t get to, Holocaust Memorial, and one of the monuments, time and weather permitting. That way we’d be back for dinner and in before the storm kicks up. Or at least in before the worst of it.”

“This isn’t the last time I’ll ever be in DC.”

“I know, but we might as well maximize the amount of time we’ll be out of the apartment.”

Brad lets him talk, and then calmly says, “I’m not actually flying out tomorrow night.”

Nate is asking “What?” before he even realizes what he heard. “What do you mean? You think the snow’s gonna get that bad?”

“Just an exit strategy. My flight’s—flexible.”

Nate can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic. “You bought an open ticket in case it got awkward?” he says slowly.

“That’s not how I thought about it,” Brad says casually, as though it were Nate’s idea, “but sure.”

“Wait, so…when _are_ you leaving?”

“The ticket says the twenty-seventh,” says Brad, and then adds, looking up at him: “For now.”

Nate is silent, thinking.

“I can’t tell if you’re pissed or not,” deadpans Brad. “I guess it was for this contingency I did this. The irony. Are we finishing this or is this lunch?”

“I’m not pissed,” says Nate slowly. Actually, he might be giddy if that’s a word he’s going to allow himself to use in self-description.

Brad seems confused, and then Nate remembers. “Wait. Fuck. No—not fuck.”

“What is going on?” Brad asks, amused, and abruptly frowns. “Going home for Christmas?”

“My parents are on a cruise,” says Nate. “But I’m supposed to go up to my sister’s.”

“Tomorrow it is,” Brad picks up seamlessly.

“No, no,” Nate says. “You can’t fly on Christmas. That’s so wrong.”

“I can.”

“That’s not what I meant. It’ll be a hassle, and besides—you can come up with me, obviously. If you want. It’s only for two days.” For reasons that probably seemed appropriate to him in the split second he says it, Nate adds, “She’s heard of you.”

There’s a long silence in which Nate is pretty sure Brad is looking at him but Nate is pointedly looking elsewhere, somewhere over Brad’s right shoulder.

“All right,” Brad says finally.

“Yeah?” says Nate. “Seriously?”

“I guess.” There’s a pause. “Then I need to buy some wine.”

He calls Kate. He’s gotten a little better with calling his sister. To be fair, she’s the one that usually calls him to check “in, not up, Nate,” but now he figures it’s unavoidable.

“Hi, honey,” she says, and then there’s a loud clatter in his ear.

“Jesus, Kate.”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m mixing batter and almost dropped the phone in the bowl. What’s up?” Before he can respond, she says, “For the last time, you don’t have to bring anything.”

“Incidentally,” says Nate, “that’s sort of what I’m calling about.”

“We have everything. Jesus Christ, Nate, it’s Baltimore, not—”

“Do we have room at the table for one more?”

He can almost see her pause and brush her hair off of her forehead. “Of course. Oh, Nate—are you thinking of bringing someone?”

He doesn’t like the way she says ‘someone.’ “It’s not like that.”

“Honey.”

“It really isn’t. It’s just a friend—it’s one of my Marines.”

He can practically hear the frown. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“But—why?”

Nate angles himself away from Brad in the other room, moving into the corner. “It’s fine if not.”

“No, no, of course it’s fine. I was just—you know, expecting something else.”

“I thought you’d know better by now,” he jokes.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Shit. “Nothing. Just that bringing someone home to meet mom and dad isn’t exactly at the top of my priority list.”

“But your Marines still are?”

Oh, Christ. Nate doesn’t know how to answer that in his own head, much less formulate a response for someone else. “Kate, just give me an answer. Either way is fine.”

“I already did,” she says. “Of course bring him. What’s his name?”

“Brad.”

“The one in your book?”

“He was in there _maybe_ twice,” he says.

“Details stick with you after you proofread them a million times,” says Kate. “All right, if that’s all, I have to go. Mike dropped the twenty-pound frozen turkey on his foot and we had to go the ER, so now he’s out of commission.”

“I don’t want to laugh,” warns Nate, “but—”

“You can laugh. I just hope Brad can lift heavy things,” she says. “See you soon.”

: : :

“Behold, your delicious, home-cooked pre-Christmas meal,” says Nate, returning from the door with two bags of Chinese. “Sorry. I can only cook hot dogs. And ragout, actually, but the movers broke the crock pot.”

Brad starts rifling through the bags. “Good with me. The bar’s pretty low.”

“MRE low?” says Nate, going to get forks from the drawer.

“Getting to skip out on the mandofun pseudo-adoption they were trying to rope all the ‘single soldiers’ into,” says Brad, apparently satisfied with the caliber and amount of hot sauce included. “I’m not touching haggis or whatever other Mel Gibson bullshit they were trying to dragoon us into eating.”

“Jesus Christ, Brad.”

Brad just grins at him, and as he walks by he sees Brad watching him. Fuck it, he thinks, and comes back.

“Brad,” he says. Brad looks up, and then Nate is leaning over, a hand on Brad’s shoulder and his lips on Brad’s. Brad’s hand snaps up to curl painfully around Nate’s wrist.

“Where are you going?” says Brad when Nate moves away to the refrigerator, tipping his head back.

Nate shoves aside month-old cheese and a jar of pickles—when did he buy those? “Ketchup.”

“ _What_?”

“Ketchup.”

“I heard what you said. With _Chinese_?”

“Yes,” says Nate, sitting down. Brad is staring at him in horror. “What? You’re having hot sauce.”

“If you don’t know why that’s wrong, I don’t even know how to begin to explain that to you.”

Nate grins. “Ketchup goes with everything. I don’t care if that makes me a philistine.”

Brad just shakes his head, loading chow mein onto his own plate.

: : :

The Saab that Brad had so condemned and is now contentedly at the wheel of gets through about twenty miles before Nate speaks.

“Okay,” he says, figuring the Parkway is a good a time and place as any to break the news. Brad is driving. “I may not have been fully honest.”

Brad says nothing, but Nate thinks he notices his knuckles go white on the steering wheel.

“It’s not because I didn’t want to,” he continues. “It’s more because I think my memory’s going. But it’s not going to be just us.”

“What do you mean?”

Nate braces himself. “There’s probably going to be a bunch of other—a bunch of smug married yuppie types.” He’s terrified that he almost said “other couples.” What he wants to add is: _It doesn’t mean anything. At least it won’t look like it. Hopefully._

Brad is still driving.

“You don’t have anything to comment? I was going to suggest you pull over to compose yourself.”

“Your family slowly devolves into a caricature of itself every time you talk about them,” says Brad, unsmiling but not otherwise angry or horrified, “but I think I’ll survive the discussions of NPR and watercress salad.”

Nate turns to the window to hide the stupid smile he knows is on his face.

“That’s it?” says Brad. “That was the entire warning? About the socialists amongst us?”

“Yes,” says Nate, not looking away from the windshield. This way he can keep imagining that Brad’s smiling, too. “Even though my sister’s husband is a Catholic Republican and my sister doesn’t vote.”

Brad exhales. “I’m not sure what I was expecting.”

“That there was no space and you were going to sleep outside?”

“More like you told your sister,” says Brad, and Nate waits for him to finish the sentence until he realizes what Brad is apparently done talking about. For some reason he doesn’t feel like rushing to assure Brad that that’s not the case and never would be. He busies himself with chewing a stray thread in his sleeve and staring at the window. At one point he makes some remark about impending snow, but Brad’s answer is monosyllabic and Nate drifts off.

Finally, when Nate says, “We’re only a couple miles out, if you want me to take the wheel,” Brad pulls over suddenly.

“Wow,” says Nate, rubbing his neck where the seatbelt dug into it, “that was dramatic,” and gets a hand on the door. “You could’ve mentioned earlier—”

Brad stops him. “I just need to know the AO before we get in.”

Nate looks over. “It’s Baltimore.”

“Your sister.”

“It’s—we’re pretty similar,” says Nate, for lack of anything else to say.

“That isn’t particularly comforting.”

Nate frowns. “It’s just her and her husband and some friends. They’re—I don’t know. Suburban types. They’re like me.”

“I can handle that,” says Brad, and Nate’s not sure if he’s reassuring himself or Nate. He pulls back onto the main road. “Do I take a right next or left?”

“Uh, left. Brad, do you—”

“And then a right?”

“Yeah. It’s—”

Brad turns on the radio. Nate can read that signal loud and clear, and abandons the questions in favor of fussing around with the tuner. He can’t seem to get any station that isn’t, inexplicably, gospel music or static.

“Can you find something that won’t make angels weep?”

“Pull over,” Nate commands.

“I said I’m driving.”

“Pull over, I need to get a cell phone signal.”

Brad reluctantly swerves to the side.

“Put it in park.”

Brad looks at him. “We’re going to be late.”

“We don’t have a time to be there. Just do it.”

Brad does. Nate unbuckles his seatbelt and leans over the gearshift, bracing one hand on the steering wheel, and kisses Brad. Brad groans and shifts in his seat until Nate undoes his seatbelt and licks into his mouth. Brad’s hands scrabble across Nate's shoulders, back, somewhere near his thigh—until he grunts, and then Nate is thrown back in his seat. He’s left staring at Brad, who clicks his seatbelt back.

“What?” says Nate.

“If you can’t do it right then don’t start,” he says, half-irritated and half-defeated. He turns the key in the ignition, muttering, “Keep hitting the fucking gearshift.”

Nate just laughs at Brad rolling his eyes and thinks that’s the end of it, of the nerves that suddenly makes him feel nauseous and hot. That should be the case, except that every time he inhales another prick of fear pierces his gut. About ten minutes from his driveway, Nate is bursting with it.

“If you’re nervous,” he blurts, and immediately regrets it.

“I’m not nervous,” is Brad’s derisive answer and, as far as Nate is concerned—and he is, very concerned—confirmation that Brad is indeed nervous.

“Honestly, you shouldn’t be nervous. We can—there’s a Shake Shack down the road if you turn left at this next—okay, if you turn back around. We can stop there for a sec.”

The next five minutes are spent unsuccessfully trying to convince Brad that Nate is suddenly unbelievably hungry and that it won’t wait the nine minutes they have left to drive. The minutes tick by until Nate is noticing familiar houses and he resorts to dirty measures. He’s not proud of it, but—actually, he kind of is.

He twists around in his seat, looking in the rearview window, and then whirls around like he has no idea where they are. “Did you take a left back there?” he asks.

“Yes,” says Brad.

Shit. “I meant a right. Did you take a right?”

“No, since I just told you I took a left.”

“None of this is familiar.”

“Time takes its toll on us all, Nathaniel.”

“No, I mean I don’t know where we are. That last crossroads, you should have taken a right. You’re going to have to turn around.”

Silently, Brad makes a U-turn and goes about half a mile before saying, “Let the record show I am not actually stupid.”

“What?”

Brad throws him a withering look. “I looked up the map. I know where I’m going. In case you fell asleep or decided to have a panic attack on my behalf, one of which is apparently currently underway.”

Nate knows when he’s been beat, so he stays silent.

“Are you content to drive circles around the block or do you actually want a milkshake?”

The amount of derision in the normally innocuous “milkshake” merits a silence from Nate until his curt directions find them in front of an O’Toole’s.

“Fitting,” says Brad, killing the motor.

Brad starts to order when Nate just asks for a pitcher of beer and waves the waiter off.

“Come here often?” asks Brad.

“One drink and that’s it,” says Nate, like Brad dragged him here. Brad seems to be thinking the same thing and settles back into the booth to play around with his phone.

“Is it Christmas yet?” Nate asks finally. “And do you have a cigarette?”

Brad just laughs. Nate groans and puts his head in his hands and then recoils when he realizes his cheek is dangerously close to the sticky bar table.

“Are you ready?” Brad asks after they each empty a pint.

“Yeah,” says Nate. “I’m not—I’m not not ready. I don’t know why I’m doing this.” He looks at Brad and adds quickly, “It’s not you,” and then wants to put his head back down.

Brad seems to get it. “Well,” he said, “let’s get the hell out of here, then.”

“Okay,” says Nate. “Maybe a few more minutes. Why waste beer?”

“Because it’s flat and costs six dollars above its actual market value.”

“Then let’s get our money’s worth,” says Nate.

Brad seems irritated now but says nothing. The Eagles’ _Please Come Home from Christmas_ comes on over the speakers as Nate pours them their second pints. Brad sips his as he leans back into the seat, tapping at something on his phone.

: : :

“Nate!”

“God, you are so pregnant,” says Nate, getting out of the car unsteadily. He’s not sure if it’s the drive or the beer, and he sincerely hopes it’s the drive. Kate could always tell when he was drunk.

Brad adds, “Congratulations.”

Nate spins around. “Right. This is Brad.”

“I’ve heard so much about you,” says Kate, shaking Brad’s hand.

“No, she hasn’t,” says Nate.

“Likewise.”

Nate looks around warily and demands, “Where are they?”

“Where’s who?”

“Come on,” says Nate, and jerks his thumb back at Brad. “This is costing me by the hour, I need to get my money’s worth.”

Kate starts laughing. “They’re all inside. Come on.”

She suddenly stops short. “I do have an unfortunate announcement to make before you go any further,” Kate declares ominously.

“Oh, no.”

“You guys are going to have to stay,” she says, “in the carriage house.”

“No,” wails Nate.

Brad looks between them. “What is that?”

“A shed,” says Nate.

“It’s not a shed,” says Kate. “It’s just an as of yet unremodeled guest house.”

“A hut.”

“Sounds good to me,” says Brad.

“Brad, it doesn’t have heating. I don’t even think it has a fireplace.”

“I like Brad,” Kate decides. “Brad, you can come with me and let my brother unpack the car.”

If two duffel bags counts as unpacking, thinks Nate, and hoists one over each shoulder. He strains to reach the top of the hatchback’s trunk, and a hand comes to push it down for him.

“Watch your head.”

Nate turns around. “Hey, Mike.”

His brother-in-law tries to pull him into a hug impeded by the duffel bags, and ends up clapping him on the back. “Good to see you.”

“Really? Because you guys put me in the carriage house, and I can take a hint.”

Mike laughs. “It has plumbing now!”

“Heating?”

Mike shifts from foot to foot. “Aren’t you guys Marines, anyway?”

Nate grins, and adjusts the straps of the duffels. “Just lead me to my cell.”

Brad kicks his feet up on the coffee table as he waits for Nate to finish shaving in front of the mirror. “What does Kate do?”

“Works at a publishing house. Mike’s a lawyer.”

Brad hums.

“Yeah,” says Nate, pressing a towel to his face and looking at himself in the mirror. The sweater still makes him look a little awkward and it’s stretched-out and baggy in places it definitely shouldn’t be, but at least his dress shirts aren’t loose on him anymore. “He kept trying—probably at Kate’s behest—to get me into law school.”

“And?” Brad says.

“Same thing,” he says. “The problem isn’t the job itself. I can see myself doing what I’m doing now forever. That’s the problem. I don’t want to die in that desk chair.”

“No,” says Brad. “Infinitely better to die in a different desk chair.”

Nate snorts. “The least I can hope for is a better view.”

“So no law school?”

“Oh—God, no. My dad’s a lawyer. Can you imagine me as a lawyer?”

“Yes,” says Brad.

“Oh,” says Nate, for lack of any other response. “Well, anything’s a possibility. Med school was a possibility, at one point.”

Brad doesn’t look too stunned by this revelation and just lifts his shoulders. “Hmm.”

Nate feels a little twinge of annoyance, but gets distracted by watching Brad undress, slowly and methodically.

“I’ve never actually gotten a good look at your tattoo,” he says.

Brad turns around obligingly, stepping out of his pants. “Satisfied?”

“Do you still like it?” Nate asks.

“What you’re asking is if I regret it,” says Brad, pulling out a shirt from a duffel bag. “And the answer is no. What’s the point in regretting? What’s done is done.”

Nate snorts. “Brad.”

“Would I do it again?” says Brad. “Yes. Doesn’t mean I’d be happy with it. I just know myself. What time do they want us at the table?”

**: : :**

“This is Marlena and Josh,” Kate is saying, “and this is Mike’s best friend, John, and his fiancée, Megan.”

Brad smiles until Kate turns away, and then says to Nate out of the corner of his mouth, “I’m not going to remember any of that.”

“Neither am I,” Nate replies.

“Oh, and the eggnog is non-alcoholic,” Kate announces. “Sorry, guys. Add your own rum to it. Everyone except my little brother,” she adds, and everyone laughs.

Nate rolls his eyes. “Cheers,” he says. “Welcome to Christmas with my family. Well, my family and I guess the random people that they know.”

“Who are—the rest?” asks Brad.

“I don’t actually know,” says Nate, scratching his nose. “I think they’re college friends.”

“ _College_ ,” huffs Brad, and Nate laughs.

Brad corners him after what has probably been an hour.

“How many glasses have you had?”

“I don’t know,” says Nate, pushing a strand of hair away from his forehead. It’s hot in the room. “Why?”

“Because I’ve been following you to the kitchen every time you get your moderate glass of wine, and I think I’m down six of whiskey.”

“This is Brad Colbert’s six shots of whiskey?”

“Could be five. That’s why I’m asking.”

Nate looks down at where his hand is dangling ominously close to the bowl of M&Ms. He laughs suddenly.

“Remember that?”

“Remember what?” asks Brad.

“Green M&Ms make you horny?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Brad says, but there’s a smile playing at his lips.

“In middle school,” says Nate. “They used to say that. You never heard that?”

“Not at my middle school.”

“You missed out,” says Nate, dumping the M&Ms in his hand into his mouth. He grins at Brad, teeth full of chocolate. He can feel himself leaning in, and he stops himself, turning back to the glass bowl.

“What are you doing?” Brad says.

Nate turns back with a closed fist. “Close your eyes.”

“No.”

“I’m speaking as your former commanding officer.”

Brad smiles, eyes shut. “Can’t resist an order."

Just as Nate is about to shove his fistful of green candy at Brad’s cautiously pursed lips, he hears his name from across the room. Brad opens his eyes.

“Nate, come here,” calls Megan, and Nate does his best to keep a steady gait as he walks over to the group of women.

They’re giggling as they say, “We have an important question.”

Nate’s pleasantly drunk and he grins.

“We were just talking about how cute Brad is,” his sister interjects.

Nate frowns. “You’re all married.”

“I’m engaged,” says Megan. “Does he have any brothers?”

“No,” says Nate smugly. “He’s an only child.”

“Is he single?” someone else giggles, and Nate’s retort dies on his tongue.

“Nate?”

He looks back up at them. He never was a particularly good liar when others were involved. “Yes,” he says.

“Oh,” coos Megan, “we have to set him up with my sister.”

Someone else brings up another cousin that’d be perfect for Brad, but Nate catches his sister, a glass of eggnog in her hand, looking at him with a strange expression.

: : :

Nate wakes up at what seems like three in the morning. It’s still dark outside, or at least feels like it.

“Is this legal?” he moans, pulling the comforter over his head.

“The neighbors snow-blowing their own property?” asks Brad, sitting on the ottoman by the window. He looks up from his phone. “Probably legal.”

“How awful of me would it be to yell at them?”

“Yell what?”

“I don’t know. I’m a veteran.”

Brad laughs. “It’s nine, anyway.”

Nate pokes his head out of the pillows. “How long have you been awake?”

“Long enough to get hungry waiting for you to shield me from your sister.”

“All right,” says Nate. “I’m up.”

The day is spent in the rush that always precedes Christmas Eve, a blur of flour and the oven door opening and closing, and Nate being shooed out of the kitchen to complete miscellaneous—and, he suspects, hastily invented—errands with Mike. He tries to stay abreast of Brad’s movements, but eventually loses him in the churning sea of people and pot roasts. He catches glimpses of Brad in the living room, on the patio, by the stairs, and he has to shake off the warm feeling of the same glimmers of Brad in the mess tent, by the humvee, somewhere near him in the dark.

“Obviously,” Megan, or Marlena, or whoever, booms suddenly, startling everyone into silence, “this is a really happy occasion, and I’m glad to be here with all of my college buddies.”

Nate can feel Brad’s effort to refrain from rolling his eyes.

“But,” she continues, “this is also the anniversary of Professor McKibbin’s death, and I thought it would be special if, before we started festivities, we could say a few words and hold a moment of silence.”

Nate doesn’t want to exchange looks with Brad for fear of appearing rude, but it’s almost involuntary, and Brad looks just as surprised as he does. Nate doesn’t know what to do with his glass, and awkwardly shuffles back towards an end table to put it down.

“He was largely responsible for bringing us all together,” says Kate, “even if it was because we were all failing and on the verge of tears outside of his office up in Burnell 600. And he was the one that ended up getting me my first paid publishing job, and the one that attended every one of Meg’s theater performances, even if he said it was for the music.”

“That’s how we knew he was lying,” says Megan. So that’s Megan, thinks Nate.

There are a few laughs that echo around the room, and after a few minutes of reminiscences, someone **—** and Nate has to crane his neck to see it’s the guy he remembers as John—suggests a poem.

“This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,” he starts reading, and Nate feels the room start to fade. He takes a deep breath.

“Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done.”

Oh, God.

“Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,” and it hits Nate. It’s going to happen. This isn’t Arlington. He feels something coming over him, and knows he’ll be embarrassed later that he described it like that. Nate feels it at the back of his eyes the second before something tears a sob out of his throat that he desperately tries to stifle. Oh, fuck. He can feel the moment the entire room notices it’s not one of them, can feel them turn their bewildered eyes on him as his shoulders shake. It’d be fine, it’d be fine if he could do it quietly, but something is making his mouth twist and his lungs heave. He has nothing to say; he can only stand there, hunched over, like he’s fucking rooted into the ground, and it wouldn’t be so awful if Brad wasn’t there. The idea of Brad standing beside him jolts him with adrenaline, and because his life is a fucking farce, his foot has fallen asleep and he almost trips the entire way out of the room.

The room is mortifyingly silent, he can hear it as he shuts himself in the tiny bathroom by the staircase.

“He’s fine,” Nate hears Brad say helplessly, and that somehow makes it even more incriminating. The sobs don’t stop, and he shudders and shakes until it passes on its own.

He thought maybe it was a one-time deal, a combination of stress and the general mental exhaustion from trying to keep afloat among his job and grad school and Brad, that he could wait out like he did at Arlington. Apparently not, he thinks as he cautiously opens the door. At least at Arlington the emotional purging would have been more acceptable. He passes the critical celluloid gazes of him and Kate and their parents, ages seven and eleven and forty-three, respectively, on a snow day somewhere in Vermont.

“Honey, are you okay?” Marlena stops him in the hallway. Or is it Megan? Who’s married to—fuck it. “We were all so worried about you.”

“Uh, yeah,” says Nate, distinctly uncomfortable. “I’m fine.”

“Everyone kept asking—”

“Yes, thank you,” says Nate, ducking around her. “I’m going to go—excuse me, I’m just going to find Brad.”

He slips away and walks into the kitchen. “Kate,” he says, “where’s Brad?”

“Oh,” she says, putting cookies on a platter, “the boys all went to look at that big tree in the backyard.”

“The boys?” Nate asks. “Are you—the _boys_?”

“Nate, don’t—”

“Where’s the big tree?”

“Where Daddy cut it down, they’re just—”

Nate walks out of the kitchen distinctly aware of how many pitying pairs of eyes are trained on his back. He doesn’t care. Kate quickly dries her hands on a towel and follows him out in the hallway.

“Nate,” she says, “what is going on?”

But he’s already out the kitchen door and stumbling in the wet snow. He sees everyone standing around the tree at the top of the berm, passing something around. Brad is laughing. Nate grabs his shoulder and whirls him around. “Brad.”

“Jesus!” says Mike. “Jesus, Nate, you scared me.”

Brad didn’t flinch. Now that his eyes are on Nate, Nate’s not sure what he thought he was going to do or say. Now everyone’s looking at him again, and he says pathetically, “Sorry, tripped at the last second there.”

Mike just laughs and opens the circle for him. “We’re just heading back down anyway. Just needed a break.”

“Yeah,” says Nate, aware of Brad’s fingers clenched painfully around his wrist behind his back. They’re standing just in the right angle of the lantern hanging from the tree that the flickering shadows are cast on them. Mike starts telling some final joke, and Nate looks at Brad.

“I’m fine,” he says quietly.

Brad looks like he doesn’t believe him, and suddenly Nate knows. He wasn’t afraid of Brad laughing at him, wasn’t afraid of his reaction to the book. This was the fucking look he was afraid of—that, for the first time, he doesn’t believe Nate.

“Katie tell you your dad cut it down?” asks Mike conversationally on the way back down, once Nate has disentangled himself from Brad.

Nate is concentrating on not skidding in the wet sticks and leaves underfoot. “No.”

“Yeah, had to. Had some kind of rot disease. I like it better like this anyway.” He stops just before the light of the patio, holding out an arm. Nate looks up at him.

“You okay, Nate?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” says Nate. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” says Mike. “It’s okay.”

“I’m not apologizing. I—I’m not—I’m fine. I’m not trying to upset anybody.”

“It’s okay,” Mike repeats. “It’s okay. I’m sure Katie’s—we understand.”

Nate stares at him. “Understand what?”

Now Mike looks uncomfortable. Good.

“Brad seems like a good guy,” Mike says finally.

Nate has fucking had it with this well-meaning mental colonoscopy bullshit. “Look,” he says. “I don’t know what my sister told you, but this is it. There’s nothing going on here. So fucking drop it.”

Mike looks at him, bewildered. “She—she didn’t tell me anything,” he says.

“Right,” scoffs Nate, pushing past him.

Kate corners him just as he’s trying to silently close the patio door and walk back to the carriage house. He figures he owes her an apology, and more. He leans his forehead on the half-closed door and says into the sliver of space, “I don’t know what came over me. I’m—that obviously wasn’t supposed to happen.”

She just continues to look at him, eyes searching his face.

“Nate,” she says. “Remember last year, when you called—”

“Jesus Christ,” he says. “I don’t need this right now.”

“No. We’re going to talk about it. Is this the same thing? As when you called?”

Nate isn’t going to fall for it. “No. Kate—I’m just fucking exhausted with—the new job, and then the applications. Aren’t we all entitled to one mental breakdown to the tune of _Quando Quando_?”

“Don’t joke,” she says.

“I’m not.” It’s still kind of funny to him, though. The song is, for some reason, playing in the living room.

“If you think you know what you’re doing, I’ll leave it alone,” she says. “Do you?”

“You need to stop this shit,” Brad says as soon as the door is closed behind them, and then Nate is being slammed into the wall. A frame clatters to the floor, and Nate can hear the glass crunching when Brad shifts.

“Fuck,” he says, his shoulder on fire. “What the fuck is your problem?” He wants to rub his shoulder, but he can’t get to it from where his arms are pinned by his sides.

“What’s yours?” asks Brad, eyes trained on his.

Nate pushes him back. “What the fuck is this about?”

“You tell me.”

“No, I mean—what is _this_? Did I fucking _embarass_ you, Brad?” At this point Nate thinks he might be going a little cross-eyed, trying to hold Brad’s gaze.

“What was that shit back there?” Brad demands, unfazed.

“Oh, fuck off.”

“No,” snaps Brad, glaring at him. “If you have a fucking problem, you tell me.”

Nate just stares, and then Brad’s hands are on his face, and Nate forgets to flinch. He can feel Brad’s teeth behind his tense lips, can feel the energy coursing through his arms and his stomach.

Nate remembers the night in flashes: his fingers pulling the sheets off the mattress; Brad’s head bobbing over his chest, over his stomach; snow falling off the eaves above the window.

He comes on his hands and knees, Brad grinding into his ass, an approximation of something they might want to do, but won’t, and it feels oddly appropriate.

: : :

In retrospect, it’s not really his fault. Nor is it Brad’s, nor Kate’s. He should have probably heard her coming up the steps, but maybe Mike did start fixing up the carriage house and that’s why it doesn’t creak anymore. Brad should have woken up if his senses are as great as the legend claims. The two of them probably should have put the pillow back onto the bed, and tugged the fitted sheet back onto the corner of the mattress it had been pulled off of. Kate should have stayed down in the house and waited for them, instead of knocking on the door and stepping into the room. All she says to their backs is, “Oh.” She leaves just as quietly.

It only seems like there’s a fucking stampede in Nate’s head, and Brad is apparently so at a loss he can’t even manage comment.

Nate really hopes his sister isn’t still outside the door. “Okay,” he says frantically, patting himself down. “Assess the damage. Clothes on.”

Brad is sitting rigid in bed now. “Barely.”

“Were we touching?”

“I don’t know,” says Brad. “Yes. Yes, most fucking likely.”

“Was it obvious?”

“Why don’t you go ask your sister?”

“Fuck,” says Nate, sitting down. “Two options: I intercept her before she goes downstairs and potentially—not that she would, but—says anything, or we get dressed and go down to breakfast and act like it never happened. And leave. Tomorrow. Tonight.”

Nate will admit the last option was a little dramatic. Brad is silent.

“Brad?” Nate says, glancing up at him. “Saying something would be helpful right now. As would breathing.”

Brad still isn’t saying anything and is staring a little disturbingly at the wall, and Nate—Nate feels kind of light-headed. He’s not sure why, so he keeps rattling on. “It’s my sister. She wouldn’t—I know this is bad, but it’s not the worst thing. Really. Honestly—I had already invited you. If anything, if she—noticed, she could have said something already. That’s cause enough for speculation, really—”

“Is this why you invited me here?”

Nate snaps his mouth shut. He looks up at Brad, who is standing before him and somehow already managed to pull on and button a shirt. He looks kind of stricken, but maybe that’s only what Nate finds himself desperately looking for, wanting to see anything beyond the cold, clear anger or whatever the fuck the Iceman emotion that Brad projects to others is.

“Is that why _I invited you here_?” Nate echoes. “I’m sorry, do you want to finish the rest of that sentence?”

Brad keeps looking at him.

“Did I invite you here, you mean, to have some big—crisis— _reveal_ with my family?” Nate asks, and he can see Brad thawing out a little. He doesn’t care. “And you thought that _I thought_ asking you here would be a convenient way to achieve that?”

Brad still seems to be invoking the fifth amendment. Nate wrenches a sweater over his head and pulls up his jeans with more violence than necessary.

He opens the door only to remember he can’t slam it, and leaves Brad in the same position only after looking back to reassure him: “Don’t worry. I’m not going down there to retaliate for your bullshit.”

He’s only halfway down the stairs before he realizes he’s being a little insensitive—after all, it’s Brad’s career. But the fact that Brad would insinuate Nate would do something like that purposely gets his blood boiling all over again.

Kate is in the kitchen, obviously waiting for him. She acknowledges his presence with a steaming mug.

“Thanks,” he says, and sits down at the table. “Where’s Mike?”

“Errands.”

“Everyone else?”

“Still sleeping,” she says, and they sip coffee for a while, looking in different directions.

“What about Brad?”

Nate tenses. Fuck. The silence had gone on for so long he had assumed it was comfortable and that she would just let this one pass between them.

“I—” he starts, and she cuts him off: “Is he still asleep?”

“Uh, yeah,” says Nate, furrowed brow betraying any sense of calm and nonchalance he was trying to project.

“He’s good with cars, right?”

“Computers,” Nate answers, confused. “And motorcycles, I guess.”

“Engines, right?” she says, and laughs. Nate is too scared to join in, and she continues: “I think the chains messed with the motor or something.”

“Even I know that is physically impossible,” Nate scoffs.

“Well, then we’re even more confused than we thought.” She smiles. “Do you think Brad could fix it?”

“He could take a look at it,” Nate hedges.

“I just don’t want to take it all the way to the mechanic’s,” she says thoughtfully.

“Okay,” Nate agrees, and they don’t say anything else for the next half-hour. She’s only four years older than him, but she’s still the most frightening and most beautiful woman he’s ever laid eyes on. Seeing siblings grow up is even scarier than seeing parents age, Nate thinks, and drinks his coffee until the water starts running upstairs and the rest of the house wakes up.

“We’re leaving today,” he says finally, when she gets up to rinse her mug out.

She just nods. “Okay,” she says quietly.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She just hugs him.

“I’m fine,” he says into her shoulder.

Nate rinses the cups out, sets another pot, and takes the trash out. When he walks back into the house, shaking the snow from his coat in the entryway, he’s ready to go back to the carriage house. He knocks like he doesn’t know what’s behind the door.

“Brad?” he says, and turns the doorknob. There’s no one there.

He wills himself to walk down the stairs slowly and finds Kate in the kitchen, cutting up eggs. Brad’s not in the kitchen either. Where the fuck could he have gone already? He tries to crane his neck to see down the driveway if his car is still there. “Kate,” he says carefully, “did Brad go anywhere?”

She gives him an odd look. “No. He’s just outside, looking at the motor.”

Jesus Christ, thinks Nate, and doesn’t bother to make sure the screen door is closed. He also realizes too late he’s in his slippers, and it’s too late to go back but too ridiculous to go any further, so he stands in the same wet, cold spot for a few seconds until Brad notices, and summarily goes back to working. He’s not sure how to approach Brad when he’s like this.

“Your sister asked me to do it,” Brad finally says with a grunt, nearly hitting his head on the propped up hood as he resurfaces. He wipes his hands on his pants and doesn’t look at Nate, peering in at the cables Nate wouldn’t know the first thing about.

“I heard,” says Nate, shivering. “Does it look okay?”

“You should go back inside,” Brad says.

“There’s coffee.”

“Okay.”

“Brad,” starts Nate, and stops. There’s a pause and he’s realizing for Brad to interrupt him, to tell him to go back inside or that he doesn’t have to say anything. Nate stands there in the snow, watching Brad’s back under the hood.

It seems like with Brad there’s only ever terror or whatever the fuck this is. He only vacillates from one to the other. He doesn’t know which end of the pendulum’s swing is easier.

: : :

Brad waits until the elevator doors close to ask, “What are we doing here, Nate?”

Nate sets his bag down and looks at him, hands braced against the elevator wall. The only remaining light in the elevator flickers. “I don’t know.”

“But you want to.”

“We’re just—” Nate starts, and doesn’t know how to go on. What are they? He can’t honestly say they’re friends—they’ve moved past that, but he doesn’t know where. Without these prescribed interactions—LT and TL, buddy and buddy—they’re both lost. Maybe it’s always been this way and that’s why Nate has made it thus far just muddling along, faking it until he makes it without knowing what to do or how to do it. But he realizes suddenly that these are the kinds of revelations you make at the end of something—that’s he’s only realizing it, that he’s only able to diagnose it, because it’s too late with Brad.

But Brad’s not inexplicable, Nate reasons. He’s not unknowable. He’s not a machine. If he can figure out Brad, he can figure his own shit out. Nate thinks harder, looking hard at Brad, at the blue eyes that feel like they’re boring a hole through his. What does he call it?

“I love you,” Nate says. It feels safer saying it here, in the swaying elevator, than in his apartment. Here it doesn’t feel like anything at all, except for a strange sense of déjà vu. Safe, Nate thinks.

Brad just says, “Yeah,” like it doesn’t solve anything.

Maybe it doesn’t, thinks Nate. The elevator has stopped but the doors haven’t opened yet.

“Doesn’t that mean anything?” he asks anyway. “Doesn’t that fucking count for anything?”

Brad keeps looking at him. “I don’t know,” he says.

“You don’t know.”

Brad is silent. The doors slide apart.

“Okay, Brad,” says Nate, stepping out, and he thinks he’s finally reached _the point._

“Ninety-nine percent of everything is shit,” Brad says, apropos of fucking nothing.

“Spare me, Brad,” says Nate, fumbling with his key in the lock. It’s the apartment, he decides. What is it about home court advantage that does this?

“So I don’t go around hoping that I find that one percent that isn’t,” says Brad calmly, shutting the door behind him.

Nate doesn’t want to start analyzing what that could mean and whether it has to do with him and what he does and doesn’t know and why it’s best to keep things that way.

“What’s going on, Nate?”

Nate is so tired. “Stop asking questions you don’t want answers to,” he says to the darkness in front of him. He feels Brad moving around behind him, and he drops his head.

“All right,” says Brad quietly. “I won’t.”

Nate doesn’t want to turn the lights on. “I’m going to bed.”

Brad’s arms slowly come around him, sliding under his coat. Nate feels the sharpness of Brad’s chin digging into his shoulder. “Why isn’t this enough?”

“Is this enough for you?” says Nate, trying to twist around to see Brad’s face. Brad’s arms keep him in an iron grip; he can barely move.

“I told you it was good enough,” he mutters, somewhere below Nate’s ear.

“But is it _enough_?”

“Wasn’t it you who told me that you make do?” says Brad.

Nate wants to laugh, sigh, scream, he’s not sure. “With fucking LSA, Brad.”

“You and me are supposed to be easy,” Brad says, rolling his forehead against Nate’s shoulder.

“That’s just it,” Nate says. What does he have left if not this? He doesn’t know what part of his thoughts are making it into words anymore, but Brad finally lets him turn around and Nate can feel teeth against his neck. He wants to tell Brad the truth, but he doesn’t want this to end. At least now the way it looks like it’ll be ending.

“Fuck me,” is what comes out instead.

“Oh, fuck,” says Nate, head between his elbows. Fuck, that hurts. He has to control his breathing when Brad moves again.

“Should I stop?” Brad pants out.

“No. No, keep going,” and the last syllable turns into a long, long moan.

 

“Stop fucking listening to me, Brad,” he says eventually, when he’s sure Brad is asleep, and because there’s only enough bravery in him for the beginnings for everything he wants to say, he leaves out _because you think you have to_.

: : :

Nate knows the car is the coward’s confessional, especially the thirty minute car ride to the departures terminal, but at this point he’s given up on whatever might stop him from going ahead with this. He knows trying to paint over mistakes only makes them worse, but he tries anyway.

“Brad, I’m—” he starts, and then reconsiders. “This isn’t some phase for me,” he says instead, and, considering the situation, it’s one of the most ridiculous things he’s ever said.

Brad is silent. “Okay,” he says finally.

“Is that it?” At this point Nate would have appreciated even some jibe.

“Yes,” says Brad.

“Is there—and this has no bearing for you whatsoever?” Nate says, getting angrier. “Nothing?”

“What are you trying to get me to say?” Brad asks.

“I’m not—Jesus, I’m not trying to get anything out of you. I just—there’s nothing you want to say?”

“What am I supposed to do? Jump up and down, clapping?”

Nate wills himself not to get angry, not to snap at him. He stares hard at the license plate of the car in front of them, specks of dirt on the windshield going in and out of focus. “You can’t avoid this forever, Brad.”

That seems to hit a nerve. “Oh, it’s me—I’m avoiding things?” says Brad, eyes mean. "When shit hits the fan you fuck off to greener pastures."

Nate feels like he’s been blind-sided until he gets his bearings and feels anger flood him.

“What are you talking about? When has that _ever_ been something I did?” Nate tries to fire back, but he knows his voice is unsteady.

“You can make the list by yourself.”

Brad can’t meet Nate’s eyes when Nate speaks again. “Why are you doing this?”

When Brad says nothing, Nate continues. “We can talk about my personal failures some other time, since, as you might have been able to tell, they’re what occupies my mind about ninety percent of the fucking time anyway. The only time I’m not thinking about that bullshit is when I’m with you. And honestly, this is the one thing I haven’t given up on, no matter—it doesn’t fucking matter. So let me ask you again: why the fuck are you doing this?”

Brad seems like he’s staying silent until his brain finds something a little less awful to say.

Nate wants to say something, but Brad cuts him off. “I’m glad you have all of your shit figured out—”

 _What_? “I don’t.”

“You think writing your book—”

"Is that what this is about?" says Nate, and he feels the fire slowly turning into embers. "The book?"

“What? I don’t give a shit about your literary endeavors, Captain,” spits Brad.

“Yeah? You seem to. You know what, Brad? I think I'm the only one here that's actually making an effort to deal with my problems."

"You're the only one here who has ‘problems,’" says Brad, and it probably doesn't get the intended effect. Nate kind of feels like laughing.

"Brad," Nate says, "come on.”

Nate is starting to think it has nothing to do with Jenny or Brian or trust issues or whatever else people have tried to prescribe to him over the years.

"You think writing your self-congratulatory book is dealing with problems?”

“ _Self-congratulatory_?” says Nate. He doesn’t know where his blood pressure is at this point. “Are you kidding me?”

“What was the point of that book?” Brad asks. “An officer and a gentleman and a scholar, too? Is that what you came into the Corps for? An extension of your ‘college experience?’”

“What is your _problem_? You think I betrayed the Corps? Sold out the platoon?" Nate is cold and dangerous.

"No," says Brad. "You fucking betrayed yourself. Everyone's got an opinion, everyone's entitled to whatever they want to think. I know you don't think—"

"I do fucking think that!" says Nate. "I'll let you say anything, Brad, and I'll listen to everything you tell me and take it into serious consideration—except that. How the hell do you think you fucking know what I think? Because I talked to you in the desert sometimes? Because—Jesus—I don't expect to hear anything from you and you think that says something about how much you know about me?"

"Why would you fucking write that, and not talk to me about it?"

Nate stops. So does Brad, and it looks like maybe that wasn't meant to come out, like Brad’s not sure that's what he means, or if he means anything at all.

"Why the fuck do you think it's necessary to explain things to civilians?” Brad barrels on, and his voice is steady and low, but it’s the first time Nate’s detected any uncertainty. “That's who you wrote it for, in the end, anyway, right? If you just wanted to get it off your chest—" and there's a sneer in there "—then you didn't have to publish. You thought you had something to tell the world. Well, that's nice. Add your book to the rest of the literature that pretends like it has a bigger purpose than just getting itself out there and proving something."

Nate's eyes are narrow when he speaks again.

"Are you upset because you thought Recon was a private experience and the book takes that away? I hate to tell you this, Brad, but the war was actually more for me than just you. The highlight of my fucking experience was not you. No—let me rephrase that. It was a highlight. It just was nowhere near the most important thing that happened to me there. So if that's what you think this is about—and I really think it is—maybe you should pull your head out of your ass. I can't believe I have to tell you, of all people, that my life was and is about more than just you."

“Good,” says Brad. “We’re on the same page.”

And what is that even supposed to mean? Nate grasps at his remaining straws. “You said—you said it was good, when you fucking called!”

“Oh,” says Brad, sneering. “Because I’ve never lied to you.”

That stops Nate. He feels worn out, like this has been going for an hour instead of five minutes.

“No,” he says eventually. “I thought that was the point.”

There’s no reply from Brad, and when he gets out of the car, Nate doesn’t remember watching him leave, bag slung over his shoulder.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this will have a third and final part, though hopefully with less of a gap in posting than the first and second. thank you for your comments!


End file.
